food essay
-
Holiday Traditions
Thanksgiving to Christmas is just crazy busy. What makes the busy-ness tolerable is the fun stuff that we do every year. Last Saturday, after hosting 42 people here for Thanksgiving, we girls had our fifth annual Christmas cookie bake. Ok, let me re-phrase that…Kristin and Shelley came over and baked all day. Julie’s sorry excuse Continue reading
-
Fall
How do you know you are with a city kid? When, driving up I-83, you enter the Hereford Zone, and he points at the trees and asks, “Is that Fall?” Yes, it is. The leaves are falling by the buckets. We could probably measure the leaffall in inches, like we do the snow. In theory, today is a Continue reading
-
Lip balm
Making lip balm is one project I’ve been wanting to do with our beeswax. It is relatively easy and foolproof. The success of a lip balm has more to do with preference than with messing up a recipe. (This reminds me of a time when I made chocolate truffles as Christmas gifts. The raspberry truffle Continue reading
-
Comfort
“Home is where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” So said Robert Frost. A grandparent’s home, that’s where you go when you don’t want to go home. A grandparent’s home is where they roll out the red carpet. If you’re really lucky, your grandparents live next door to your Continue reading
-
One box of spaghetti
How many people can you feed with one box of spaghetti? Or to rephrase that, how far will one box of spaghetti go? When I was growing up, my mom fed nine of us with one box of spaghetti. She usually cooked capellini, I think because the strands were thinner and it looked like we had Continue reading
-
Tapenade–the real stuff
If you don’t like black olives, you can stop reading now. Tapenade, real Provençal tapenade, is all about black olives. I often see olive fixings labeled “tapenade” but they just look like diced olives. The real stuff, what you’ll find at the outdoor marché in Aix en Provence, is purply-black, spreadable, and packed with exquisite flavors. I started making tapenade following Continue reading
Slightly Off the Grid 